Green's new champions: For once, big business was on the right side of the effort to save threatened bird species

SELECTION Chocolate Chick

I can see the refinery's gas-flare while we are still 10 kilometres away from Mathura. This is no ordinary refinery. The Indian Oil Corporation's 8.8 million metric tonnes a year refinery at Mathura, one hour from Agra, and located in the sensitive Taj Trapezium Zone on National Highway 2 processes low sulphur crude oils from Bombay High and Nigeria and high sulphur crude from West Asia. Oil refineries bring out the worst in green activists. This one has been accused of having played a large part in effecting a change in the colour of the Taj-from milky white to yellowish-white. But it isn't the refinery, or the Taj, or its colour I am interested in-it is in the much-studied concept of migration.

The Book of Jeremiah has a line that says "The stork in the heavens knoweth her appointed time; and the turtledove, and the crane, and the swallow, observe the time of their coming". And the flight of quail that saved the Israelites from starvation during their march through the Sinai is now accepted to be a fallout of the mass migration of birds from their breeding grounds in eastern Europe and Western Asia, and their winter home in Africa. The trip to Mathura has everything to do with migration and little to do with religion, although the city encompasses all of ancient day Brindavan, where the Hindu God Krishna once frolicked.

Not too long ago, I would have had to travel a further 100 kilometres by road to experience the phenomenon of migration first-hand. Keoladeo National Park, popularly referred to as Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary is a world heritage site and usually the destination of thousands of migratory birds. But birds need water and Keoladeo is reeling under the effects of a drought that has hit the state of Rajasthan.

At least some of the birds have found an alternate home-the five 1,800 square metre polishing ponds attached to the effluent treatment plant at the Mathura refinery. The ponds are located in the 18,000 square metre ecological park at the refinery-a park where the Bombay Natural History Society has recorded a total of 96 winged species, including 30 migratory ones. I'm not favourably inclined to oil companies but have to admit that the park is g-r-e-e-n; and the presence of the birds, and their nests in the polishing ponds clearly reflects the low level of pollution at the refinery. There are northern shovellers, pintails, tufted pochards (all migratory species), and resident waterfowl, spot billed ducks, herons, ibises, egrets, and painted stork. The local birds have been around ever since the ecological park came up in 1993, but the migratory species are recent additions, a consequence of the drying up of Bharatpur. ''The ecological park at the Mathura refinery can rival any bird sanctuary in India,'' gloats M.S. Ramachandran, the Chairman and MD of IOC. He then proceeds to rattle off the environmental certifications and awards collected by it: the ISO 14001 and the Golden Tech Environment Excellence Award in 2000, 2001, and 2003.

Safe haven: The park at Mathura refinery has proved a major boon for the migratory birds

The ecological Park at the Mathura refinery : Sanctuary!

At the core of the avian-friendly ambience of the Mathura refinery is an 'eeteepee' as employees term it, a modern effluent treatment plant (ETP). This works on three levels: physical, to separate oil and water; chemical, to remove sulphides; and biological to facilitate biodegradation of organics, the removal of settleable solids, and natural aeration. The polishing pools, for those who'd like to know their eeteepees, form the last stage in the effluent treatment where the water surges from an underground pipe of one metre through tiled flooring. The pond is divided into five parallel channels by means of bunds. All the five bunds are kept in series and an average depth of 1.5 metre is maintained. Here the water is subjected to sedimentation in a clarifier where by natural aeration and symbiosis of underwater plants and micro-organisms. The major chunk of the treated effluent is recycled for various uses in the refinery resulting in conservation of fresh water. The remaining part is let in the river Yamuna and the Barari minor canal. That description may sound like gibberish to some, but to avid natural historians it is as sweet a birdsong as they're likely to hear in India. Says Asad R. Rahmani, Director, BNHS: ''It was a wonderful experience to see nearly 3,000 waterfowl in the safe havens of the ecological park.''

As I leave the refinery, I remember that an acquaintance and fellow hobby-naturalist had once narrated a similar story-of the Chennai-based Amalgamations Group's sprawling manufacturing facilities at Sembiyam on the outskirts of the city serving as a nesting ground to birds, both resident and migratory, that couldn't find a clean patch of green or water anywhere else. I wonder, do these birds, here and in Chennai know that they have big business to thank?